The blog of a chug-a-long angler enjoying his life at the water side…

Session 61 – Lures On The Canal

As I stated in my previous posting regarding my intentions for this week, earlier today I headed off to my local stretch of the Staffs-Worcs canal armed with a shoulder bag of lures and traces, a collapsible landing net and my 9’ 10g-40g spinning rod.

A beautiful morning with air temps at 8C on arrival at 0900, and 10C as I departed at about 1200, according to the car’s thermometer. No water temps taken as I hadn’t my fishing thermometer with me.

Water was very clear and no boats passed – due entirely to the locks further up being closed for maintenance as I was told by a passer-by – so really good luring conditions.

I started off using the dropshot technique, and roved about ¾ mile along the canal to the locks at which my ‘rights to fish’ terminated – ie the limit of the controlling club’s stretch in that direction. But despite trying many good, and not so good, looking spots and changing the type and colours of the lure, I only managed two possible grabs/tugs.

However, a passing couple stopped for a few minutes and told me that an angler fishing up at the lock ahead yesterday had had a pike chasing and leaping at his fish as he was landing them… so when I arrived there I cast the dropshot lure around the area a few times, then sat on the wall with a cup of coffee whilst I changed from the dropshot set up to a standard lure setup with a 9.5cm Savage Gear soft bodied lure (fluoro-yellow in red scull lip) and cast around the area for 15-20 minutes and then changed the lure again to a silver bladed, 16.5g, spinner and repeated the casting around for another 15 minutes or so until it was time to return back down the stretch to the car and home. And so, I wandered back, casting the bladed spinner here and there … but unfortunately fruitlessly.

So now the next trip is looking like being Friday’s full day session to waters yet undecided still but veering towards Pike Pool 2 – but I’m also hoping that it may be possible in the interim to get another couple of hours canal luring in on another stretch of canal…

This afternoon, whilst in Wolverhampton centre, I bought a couple of second-hand angling books for my collection… and one of them was a bound compilation of 21 monthly editions of ‘Midland Angler’ from February 1957-December 1960. Very interesting reading! 1957 – the BAA had taken on the fishing lease at Chasewater and their Eastham stretch of the River Teme, the fisheries consultancy on the Teme declared that the Teme upstream of Tenbury would be classified a game river and no longer would receive annual stockings of coarse fish, a lot of Dick Walker articles, Fred J. Taylor declaring he knew where there were 12lb tench and this is supposedly a 1990+ phenonomen due to gravel pits… and I’ve only read the first few months of 1957 so far… but the disheartening bit is the pictures of the lines of dead pike, and one advert for a Birmingham bait supplier shows 3 or 4 large but very dead pike hanging up outside his shop :(. Anyway, quite riveting reading and looking forward to this new bedtime book tonight :).